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Changing Fund Prospectuses:
What Disclosure Should Entail

By

Roger Lowenstein Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Updated May 29, 1997 12:01 a.m. ET

What's the purpose of disclosure? To lay bare the truth, right?

Yes, but only in part. Mandated disclosure, which is as distinctly American as the celebrity lawsuit, also achieves the greater good of influencing the behavior of disclosers. If politicians had to reveal their whereabouts on Sunday mornings, most of them would be in church. "Sunlight," Justice Louis Brandeis said, "is the best of disinfectants." This...